People Need People
It’s April 27th, 2018. I am a friend’s guest at the We Are Family Foundation’s annual gala. The Manhattan Center’s Hammerstein Ballroom shimmers with youth entrepreneurs and renowned artists alike as everyone gathers to celebrate Nile Rodgers’ foundation for young changemakers. That year, the gala honored LL Cool J and Roger Daltrey of The Who — two icons who joined Nile and Chic to perform the sort of concert you wish you could relive even a year and a half later.
But it wasn’t the loudness of the band or the uproarious conversations that surprised me. It was a speaker.
As part of the gala, the Foundation invited several of its youth honorees to give a remark. Diana Chao, one of 30 Global Teen Leaders chosen for the Foundation’s 2017 Three Dot Dash program, stepped up the stage. She began with a letter: “Dear Stranger” As she chronicled her journey with bipolar disorder and how she founded what is today the largest global youth-for-youth mental health nonprofit, I heard something familiar: a hint of my mother.
See, my mother is a poet. She has always had a unique ability to harness the English language. As Diana delivered her speech, her poetic rhythm and distinct cadence resonated with me. She spoke softly, but her sentiments were loud: I felt like I had to do something. I went up to her later that evening and we exchanged business cards.
We connected deeply about the intersection of art and science. Poetry and climate change. Painting and neuroscience. Collective intelligence and Blockchain Technology. Particularly, though, we shared with each other our stories and hypotheses on America’s mental health riddle.
I wasn’t just interested for the sake of being interested. Her story resonated with me.
When I was very young, due to a disruptive and alcoholic home environment and being the youngest of four, I suffered from anxiety. Having been bounced from school to school and treated like I had a severe learning disability, my rapid and creative thoughts weren’t interested in rote memorization. They operated on their own meter — there was a such a vibrant world out there to explore! Really, I was an artist — a creator.

As an entrepreneur, I have honed my creative mind in a multidisciplinary fashion. I firmly believe that now and in the future, hybrid-disciplines will be much more normal. In the twenty-first century, our technology is so advanced and yet, innovation in mental health has stagnated.
America has a mental health problem. And so does the rest of the world. Clinical depression is projected to rank second as the cause of disability worldwide by the end of 2020. I know firsthand how trauma can persist and evolve throughout the years. So I’m not just worried about the future of mental health — I’m personally invested in it.
Over the past 45 years, suicide rates have increased by over 60%. And while 50% of all lifetime cases of mental illness begin by age 14, and 75% by age 24, 8 out of 10 Americans with severe depression do not receive sufficient treatment — if any treatment at all.
Almost 21 million Americans have at least one addiction, yet only 10% of them receive treatment. Alcohol and drug addiction cost the U.S. economy over $600 billion every year.
It doesn’t surprise me that Diana’s organization, Letters to Strangers, has been so successful.
Beyond Diana’s creative ingenuity, she has bridged the gap connecting people to the support they need — each other. People underestimate the potency, affirmation and unification of sharing with a community. It is one of the most wonderful gifts we can give each other and it cannot happen by staring into a screen.
“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances, if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” — Carl Jung
Today, Letters to Strangers (L2S) seeks to destigmatize mental illness and increase access to affordable, quality treatment worldwide through anonymous letter-writing exchanges, science-informed peer education, and grassroots policy-based advocacy.
I believe that mental health is going to be at the forefront of the next generation — it already is. Mental health has intimately impacted each and everyone of us. In a time when we are more isolated from each other and busier than ever, it is critical that we restore the power of the human connection and care for each other where we can.
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